In my Professor Seagull-like need to feel like I’m building some chronicle which will withstand the fallibility of memory – and also to simply point out the diamonds buried in the dense mulch of the Internet - I have created a Tumblr.
You can see it here.
I suspect it will see more action than Bourchol, as it’s far easier to recognize and point out something interesting or great than it is to say something interesting or great about it.
Many medical historians choose to focus their studies on the social history elements of the history of medicine. Certainly, they may use quantifiable history and other techniques to support their thesis, but ultimately the majority of questions medical historians ask are intimately connected to the idea of how humans respond to disease, and why.
I had the pleasure of learning all about historical human responses to disease in a semester-long course about the history of epidemics. From the Black Death to AIDS, we looked at how diseases have been constructed and combated in both pre-scientific and post-scientific societies.
Naturally, my interest was piqued when I heard about this potentially pandemic swine flu.
2008 was a year filled with music for me. My first concert-going experiences, new artists, and a taste of spotlight for myself. Dress buttons were torn off, bootheels were broken, cities were left and gone to, all for music.
So it’s not surprising that, thinking back on 2008, I came to wonder what songs I had listened to most, and whether or not the year might be boiled down into a token of my musical experiences.
Continuing from my last post, part 2 of Andy Garland’s creative gift.
Hmm I wonder how much boy-retainers go for these days…and how much I’ll need to pay people to call me The Historical Miss with regularity…
This is the first time I’ve ever received a personalized epic saga for a Christmas gift. I think…yes…I think I rather like this kind of ode! (She confessed, stroking her swollen ego.)
I’ll note, for those not following my Twitter or every waking moment of my life via a hired P.I. (and why aren’t you?), that this poem does indeed chronicle recent misadventures in my life, and I’ll let you decide how much is embellishment and how much is biography.
Thanks (and credit) goes to Andy Garland, a fine screenwriter and playwright if ever there was such a thing.
As those of you who follow my Twitter know, I am still very much alive. But my last post here, on the other hand, was four months ago. The unannounced hiatus is by no means a sign of abandonment. The internet may have taken some Ezetimibe, but by gum, I’ll have it clogged again in no time.
My excuse reason for the profound silence?
School. Reconciling postmodernist linguistic theory with the practice of history for three hours every Thursday had the tendency to leave my brain a quivering, thoughtless mass for at least 72 hours afterward. Add to that primary task various essays, heaps of weekly readings in four courses, the odd job and the odd article for the student paper, and I found myself lacking sufficient brain juice to string together a worthwhile post. It’s my blogging philosophy that an entry should be coherent, entertaining, and topical* and I could only ever seem to conceptually muster two of the three at any given time this past semester – if that.
I hope that my free-ish time in December will allow me some moments to reflect on the great experiences I’ve had as a person and as a student in the past four months. (And I can assure you that the student is not a real type of person.)
A sample platter: My trip to San Francisco, the tattoo I found myself acquiring there, my hands-on experiences with a 453 year-old book, the music I’ve been listening to, and the books and articles I’ve been reading.
So do get comfy and acquire yourself some tea. At a snail’s pace, I’ll endeavor to unpack some interesting reads.
*This philosophy may or may not be consistently reflected in actual entries :D
Busy busy busy! Lazy lazy lazy. (Or should that be lazy lazy lazy, busy busy busy? I can’t always tell these days…)
Gearing up for PAX with the Quiksave crew, and not to mention working and gearing up for year four of a five-year honors degree at UVic, has kept me out of the blogging headspace.
Two quick things:
My review of the Girl Talk concert is up on the Martlet’s website. You can check it out here. Let me just say that it’s always a marvel to me what a good editor can do. (Read: Whittle my overburdened prose-thicket into something presentable and readable.)
I’m reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which comes out September 9th. This is the first time I’m getting to read an advance copy of a novel, and it brings with it a giddy pleasure. I’m hoping to finish the whopper before deadline so a review can see the light of day just before its debut. Reviewing is meant to be this way. Being freed from the burdensome feeling of “too-lateness” is delightful.
I have been a busy lass as of late.
For starters, I participated in a Rock Band competition run by a local radio station (The Zone 91.3) along with Tour de Rock to raise money for cancer research, and I’m delighted to say that I had a blast. Our band, Five Knuckle Dry, managed to take the #1 spot, too! (I was bassist.) You can find some video and pictures in The Zone’s photo vault.
The experience gave me a lot of respect for rock stars. It’s hard to nance across a stage in tights and boots, and somehow keep up with your bass strums while tossing your hair erratically. The lights get damnably hot and blinding, and one’s hands can get sweaty and slip on the buttons strings.
I also got invited to join the fellas over at Quiksave.net on their podcast. I’ve written for them a bit in the past, and I was happy to get asked to step up to the podcasting plate – even though I’m surprised at my voice’s slurry, mannish qualities. (Enunciation is a new goal of mine.) You can find me here, in Episode 19.
And now I’m going to dive back into writing a review for the Martlet of Girl Talk’s performance at Sugar nightclub. That’ll be in the August issue, on shelves and digitally available. In case you’re too busy to hunt it down in August, I’ll give you the gist of it now: It was incredible.
I happened to roll out of bed with perfect timing yesterday. I hop on Dantalion, check my Twitter, and lo – Gabe/Mike of Penny Arcade announced just minutes ago that the uStream was about to go live. I’d been wanting to catch one such feed for a while, and I’m glad I did.
I tuned in to find he’d already drawn none other than our “friend” Jack Thompson in the first panel. In light of Jack’s recent behavior, this was already setting itself up to be a winner of a comic.
Tycho/Jerry had done the playlist that was layered over the live feed. Portishead played while Jack Thompson was being colored. (The chatbox enjoyed making jokes at his expense. One winner: “he can only orgasm when he kills a puppy.”)
Mike Krahulik draws with impressive speed. His Photoshop skills led the chatbox to cry, “MOAR LENS FLARE!” Jack Thompson was colored in in what seemed like moments.
The Ben Folds cover of Bitches Ain’t Shit piped in just as Mike moved to the next panel. A fearsome creature began to take shape – Broodax!
Broodax took a little more time and effort on Mike’s part, but he inked on valiantly until the creature was duly rendered. In the blank comic panel, a message to us, written by tablet pen: “Sorry, not drawing him again.”
A quick cut n’ paste later, and Broodax filled the final panel. The chatbox filled with lols. Another message from Mike before he went back to work, a winsome and defiant, “Fuck that.”
He colored in Broodax with the same speed he’d colored Jack Thompson, going into great detail with the blood around the chap’s mandibles. Music and amiable chatter flowed. Carpathia, BT feat. M Doughty, the Cranberries, the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (which I CAN’T believe I hadn’t heard/heard of before), David Wilcox, Genki Rockets, Gothic Archies, Interpol, Imogen Heap, and Iron & Wine songs set the varied mood.
Tubgirl may or may not have been brought up at one point.
The dialogue went in, and after a last-minute edit from Jerry via email, the comic was finished.
Mike hopped on the mic (ha ha) to chat with us when he was done, kindly offering himself up to some Q&A. While he was doing this, people started talking about a goat. A goat from “last time.” As though summoned, up on the live feed of Mike’s desktop, a goat appeared. There were also some fighting dragons and other images at one point, but the goat remained, stealing the show.
And then the goat began to move.
At first, it flailed around screen. Then it sulked down to the bottom of the screen and PEERED out at each and every one of us. I managed to capture the terrifying moment:
At first, Mike couldn’t see the mysterious creature, because of some quirk of uStream. After he went off-air and the goat persisted, however, his jubilant laughter informed us that he had finally seen the goat.
PA-TV definitely has the curiosity-satisfying voyeuristic element down, but it’s also a lot of fun. I hope to catch more live feeds in the future, and if you were sitting on the fence about taking time to check it out, I’d suggest you do it at least once.
You can check out PA-TV here.
And also, check out the feature WotC is doing right now. Penny Arcade + Player versus Player + playing the new 4th edition, and recording their session for all? Yes please. 2 episodes are up, and both leave me thirsting for more.
Speaking of which, I’m off to get my 4th edition core rulebooks right now.
I decided that having a blog ostensibly “(A)Bout Writing” when I don’t have as much to contribute on the topic as I’d like was a recipe for stagnation. Having come up with the idea of chronicling my Script Frenzy attempt (such as it was) a short while before plunging in, it’s safe to say that (A)Bout Writing wasn’t the most thought-out blog on the internets.
But, determined to remain a clogger blogger, I’ve shifted gears to settle into Bourchol, a more multi-purpose playground with a name like a horrible bodily-fluids accident, which I hope will see a little more activity.
Thanks to those who intend to keep an eye on me after the move.
I love the podcast You Look Nice Today. I got hooked the moment I heard of its existence, having already been drooling and sweating over each of @hotdogsladies’ Tweets for some time. The combined comedy genius of Adam Lisagor, Scott Simpson, and Merlin Mann melts into a great podcast full of devilishly ribald comments and freeform homosocialism that’s as satisfying as the grilled cheese I alluded to earlier with that “melts” adjective.
I submitted some answers to their JOBBOTRON thingiemajiggie. And lo, I was handed my destiny. I fear for this great country.
Allow me to remind myself (and you, dear reader), of my own foolishness. From Day 18’s update:
Morale: It was ebbing there for a while, until I realized now I only need to write about 6ish pages per day to reach the requisite 100, which shouldn’t be TOO hard since my final university exam for the year is over with tomorrow. (She said, naively, grossly underestimating the true magnetic pull of other distractions, like video games pursuing some good literature.)
To my credit(?), my optimism was couched by cynical foreshadowing. It turns out that the cynical foreshadowing has come to pass.
I should be ashamed of myself. Catavarie made the most of his time and has won the damn thing! I think it’s the old ‘people with free time get nothing accomplished’ phenomena (is there a better, more succinct name for that?). I believe it was in episode #17 of Dr. Ginger Campbell’s Books and Ideas Podcast where interviewee Mur Lafferty made some remarks on the difficulty of being a writer at home. Self-imposed deadlines are fairly deadly, and the spirit of the fair-game competition, Script Frenzy, apparently wasn’t enough of an external deadline to really, really motivate me.
I’m sure some of my zeal right out of the gate was fueled by the desperate, wild-eyed desire to just be writing anything other than essays and exams. I still like my original concept, but since I didn’t get a skeleton outline down before I began writing, I found it drifting, sometimes in directions I wasn’t pleased with. I’m not free-form enough for stuff like Script Frenzy and Nanowrimo, I think. I’m one of those anal retentive writers who has to basically write the whole damn thing before I sit down to write the whole damn thing.
I’m going to use this public shame at failing Script Frenzy to launchpad into the research stages of the SPP™.
In lieu of a triumphant page-count update, here are some things I have “accomplished” in recent memory:
All caught up in listening to You Look Nice Today.
Discovered BLDBLOG, via a link to their great interview with Daniel Dociu, a designer for Guild Wars.
My dark elf Inquisitor on EQII is now level 21. Or 22? My newly acquired secret vice has begun to grow, like a delicious and gratifying tumor.
And, today is, of course, the day that GTAIV comes out. I’m debating going to the midnight launch at my local EB Games. This is, after all, the first 10 that IGN.com has given a game in ages.
Whether you were being a productive writer, or being a productive loafer, I hope everyone had a grand weekend.
In my little Webnote box on Netvibes (my startup page, and the best thing to happen to me since Firefox), I have a memo about a possible topic for blog content. It says this:
*Writing surroundings, writing times; thought I was an evening, solitary writer. I seem to be more of a morning public writer.
Yet here I am at roughly 1:30AM, alone in my room, designing the herald of Dajobas. (As per the Sinister Adventures challenge, which I mentioned in an earlier post.) And no, that’s not a euphemism for something else.
I’ve been concentrating effort on trying to be a writer for long enough to know that just when you think you’ve established a ground rule for yourself, it will be broken – but even this surprised me. I also usually tell myself I don’t like writing with unfamiliar tools, be it a pen I’m unfamiliar with, a pencil I don’t like, or (FSM forbid), a computer I dislike. Yet here I am on my new PC, Dantalion, with unfamiliar keyboard and software galore. The pros and cons of a Mac vs a PC from a writing POV will likely be the topic of another post, but for now suffice it to say that I was considering my iBook to be my prime writer’s companion.
Being struck with totally unexpected inspiration made me pause and think. How many times have I – and perhaps other writers out there – forged concepts of ideal writing habits which really don’t exist? Have we perhaps blocked out moments of inspiration because of rigorous habit? Or, is habit all that finally gets novels written?
It’s hard to tell what set me off tonight, though I think it might have been my closer look at the NSI playWRITE competition’s guidelines (which I also linked to earlier). I was going on the assumption that you had to have a full module to pitch, but it looks more like you’re pitching yourself, and your talents. Perhaps naively, this worries me less!
Or perhaps it was the beer. A San Franciscan Anchor Steam, for the curious.
With full verve and vigor, onwards I charge!
Today’s writing accomplishment (so far): 1500-odd words on an essay. Oh boy!
Back to Dajobas’ herald.
[Music] The Strike of a Blade – Hitoshi Sakimoto – Final Fantasy XII OST
I was productive today, I swear. Unfortunately, the arenas in which I was productive weren’t the important areas.
Isn’t that always the case? It’s why I like to have a few projects going at once, though – chances are, if I’m procrastinating about dealing with one, another one will see a surge of attention.
I brainstormed some adventure ideas to submit to Dungeon when the 4th edition of D&D comes out (since they’re closed to 3.5 Ed. submissions now), I outlined some details of the module I might submit to playWRITE (if I can figure out some module design tools like the Aurora Toolset on time!), and picked away at an essay for a class I’m in – ‘Death & the Afterlife in England’, incidentally. I’m in over my head on two of the above projects, owing to lack of experience. Optimism and pep are my fuel at this stage, before realization and cynicism kicks in!
I resisted the urge to fiddle with GarageBand to make the opening/closing music for the SPP™.
I listened to a few podcasts. I caught up on a lot of blogs.
Unfortunately, no script frenzy pages got written today, and my brain was far from the project itself. I have a feeling this is going to come down to an intense, caffeine-fueled surge of activity near the end of the month.
Script Frenzy: 12/27 pages I should have at this point
D&A Final Essay: 917/3,000 words (due Friday!)
[Music] Black Dirt – Sea Wolf (Leaves In The River)
